20th century: 1900 - 1909

February 24: A supplementary statute of the Carl Zeiss Foundation significantly increases the annual endowment of the university, primarily for mathematical and scientific research.

April 1: The Zeiss factory introduces the eight-hour working day for its employees.

May 1: The Saalbahnhof becomes a stop for the Berlin - Munich (Rome) express trains.

October 14: The "Köhlersche Theater", which has been transferred to municipal ownership, opens its season as the "Jenaer Stadttheater". In the following years, it is leased to frequently changing theater directors.

March 19: The municipal power station begins operations.

April 1: Electric streetcars run in Jena for the first time.

November 29: The "Porzellan=Manufaktur Burgau a. S. Ferdinand Selle" is entered in the commercial register of the city of Jena. The temporarily very successful company, for which artists such as Henry van de Velde, Albin Müller and Erich Kuithan create designs, is forced to close in 1929.

March 14: The new main post office on Engelplatz is opened. It is built on the site of the Schömann House, which was demolished in 1900.

May 30: The Catholic student fraternity "Sugambria" is founded and joins the Cartell Association of Catholic German Student Fraternities in 1903. It is rejected by the national-Protestant corporate milieu, which leads to a long-lasting "academic culture war".

February 1: The City Museum, founded in 1901 by the art historian Paul Weber, is opened to the public in the newly built City Treasury building in Weigelstrasse. The exhibition is based on the private collection of archaeological finds, documents, graphics, militaria, studentica and memorabilia purchased from the lithographer Max Hunger.

May 13: The "Carl Zeiss" soccer club is founded, initially for employees of the Carl Zeiss company, but open to everyone from 1904. After the integration of other sports by 1917, it takes the name "1st Jena Sports Club".

May 16: Citizens from Jena and Wenigenjena found the Jenzig-Gesellschaft e. V. with the aim of developing the prominent mountain as a recreational area. Hiking and driving trails are subsequently laid out and the first shelter is built.

November 1: TheVolkshaus ,built between 1900 and 1903 according to designs by architect Arwed Roßbach and financed with funds from the Carl Zeiss Foundation, is opened. The concept for the multi-purpose building, which is open to all political parties and has a generally accessible reading hall, goes back toErnst Abbe.

December 20: The Jena Art Association is foundedunder the chairmanship of lawyer Eduard Rosenthal. The first exhibitions are held in the skylight hall of the Volkshaus.

End of the year: Courses in drawing, painting and modelingare offered for the first time inthe Volkshaus in the "Free Drawing School" run byErich Kuithan (until 1908).

The demolition of the partially dilapidated Jena City Palace begins.

For the first time, a "department store" is listed in the address book for Jena. It is the store of the merchant Adolph Behrendt at Markt 17.

March: Eugen Diederichs moves to Jena with his publishing house, which moves into a new building on Carl-Zeiss-Platz in 1906. In addition to works of German Romanticism and Classicism as well as writings on antiquity and Friedrich Nietzsche, the publishing house mainly publishes modern authors. Diederichs becomes one of the main protagonists of the Jena cultural scene ("Sera Circle") with often unconventional activities.

July 6: The first "Paradise Festival in Jena" establishes the tradition of summer paradise festivals, which - with interruptions - develop into highlights of the city's cultural life (last in 1968).

July 30: The American Rowena Morse is the first woman to complete a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Jena.

October 29: The University's Institute of Mineralogy moves into a new building in Schillerstrasse (destroyed in 1945), built with funds from the Carl Zeiss Foundation.

The Jena municipal council decides to create a new town seal. It is based on a copy of the Great Jena City Seal of 1652 with the addition of the grape and the year 1905. At the same time, the city colors blue, yellow and white are officially adopted, although there is no documentary evidence of this.

The first Jena allotment garden association - "Am Forst" Jena e. V. - is founded.

January 14: Following the death of Ernst Abbe, a spontaneous funeral procession of several thousand people forms in the city.

September 17-23: The Reich Party Congress of German Social Democracy takes place in the Volkshaus. August Bebelgives the opening speech .

October 2: The Jena-Eisenberg-Crossen railroad line is put into operation.

November 14: The "New Municipal Gasworks" in Löbstedter Straße goes into operation.

Fritz Stein takes up the post of university music director (until 1914) and the first (associate) professorship for musicology at Jena University (from 1913).

January 11: Ernst Haeckel founds the "Monistenbund" to spread his scientific atheism ("monism") based on Darwin's theory of evolution.

31 July: The Studentische Singverein, newly founded in 1861 and now a color-wearing student association with an alumni association, is renamed the "Sängerschaft zu St. Pauli" (after the rehearsal venue, the church of the former Paulinerkloster monastery).

(um) October 14: The 100th anniversary of the Battle of Jena and Auerstedt is commemorated in Jena and the surrounding area. The commemoration of the dead is intermingled with chauvinistic tones about expected clashes with the "hereditary enemy" France. A monument in memory of the Prussian and Saxon fallen (Max Unger, Berlin) is unveiled in front of the church in Vierzehnheiligen.

November 2: The states maintaining the university decide to amend the disciplinary statutes. This means that from the winter semester of 1907, women who were previously only admitted to the Faculty of Philosophy as students are entitled to study in all faculties.

The wine merchant and hotelier Paul Göhre acquires the Marktmühle. Together with Göhre's house on the Markt and a new building in place of the demolished Marktmühle and the Keichersche Haus in Saalstraße, the Alte and Neue Göhre ensemble of buildings is created between the Markt and Saalstraße.

March: Hermann Leber is the first directly elected Social Democrat to join the Jena municipal council, after Reinhold Härzer, a Social Democrat, had won a municipal council seat on the candidate list of the left-wing bourgeois citizens' association in 1895 .

June 16: The eastern cemetery in Wenigenjena is opened.

Under Moritz von Rohr, Zeiss begins to build up its eyewear department. Von Rohr's achievements consist not least in the further scientific foundation of spectacle science. The production of spectacle lenses forms an important civilian business area for the Zeiss company from around 1912.

February/March: The expressionist painter Emil Nolde stays in Cospeda, where the "Cospeda watercolors" are created.

9/10 May: The German Peace Society organizes the first German Peace Congress in the Volkshaus. The congress is opened by the peace pastor Ernst Böhme, who works in Kunitz .

July 31/August 1: The university celebrates the 350th anniversary of its foundation. To mark the occasion, a new main university building designedby the renowned Munich architect Theodor Fischer is inaugurated on Fürsten-/Löbdergraben (on the site of the demolished city palace).

Ernst Haeckel presents the University with the building of the future Phyletic Museum, which was built in Art Nouveau style according to his ideas and sketches and financed by private donations and donations from the Carl Zeiss Foundation, as a gift. Under Haeckel' s successors, a museum on phylogenesis (phylogenetic history) and evolutionary theory is created to present the university's zoological-palaeontological collections.

Summer: Winzerla, Burgau and Lobeda (up to Burgauer Brücke) are included in the city's streetcar network, with the route running through Kahlaische Straße.

November 1: The "Sächsisch-Thüringische Verein für Luftschiffahrt" is founded in Jena. The Zeiss physicist Ernst Wanderslebis involved and succeeds in taking the first brilliant aerial photographs.

November 14: The Swedish Academy awards the Nobel Prize for Literatureto Jena philosopher Rudolf Eucken.

December 17: The city council decides to take over the private "Pfeiffersche Lehr- und Erziehungsanstalt" as a municipal upper secondary school. The nine-class institution leading to university entrance qualification is relocated to the "Alte Universität" ("Wucherei") building on Fürstengraben and opened in 1909.

March 31: The Volksbad - built as a public bathing facility on the initiative of the Volksbad-Verein Jena with funds from the Carl Zeiss Foundation, the Sparkasse and the city - opens its doors.

Summer: An initiative by auxiliary school director Hermann Winzer gives children from Jena the opportunity to relax close to nature in Jena Forest. In the following years, the "Stern" school camp is built.

July 5: The Bismarck Tower erected on the Tatzend plateau is inaugurated.

October 1: The municipality of Wenigenjena/Camsdorf is incorporated into Jena at its request. The number of Jena residents rises to around 36,500.

November 14: The painting by the Swiss painter Ferdinand Hodler "Exodus of German Students in the War of Liberation of 1813" is presented to the University. The Society of Friends of Art in Jena and Weimar had commissionedHodler to paint this work in 1907 and donated the painting to the University.